


that one where everyone is a little in love with Morse

by guardianoffun



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: F/M, Found Family, M/M, Unrequited Crush, everyone has a crush on Morse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-25 22:10:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18710656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guardianoffun/pseuds/guardianoffun
Summary: exactly what it says on the tin! the moment most of the gang realises they love, or are in love with Morse. He doesn't even know he's doing it.





	that one where everyone is a little in love with Morse

**Author's Note:**

> i was thinking about how i can see morse with literally everyone and how i don't know who i'd see him end up with in a perfect world and i realised that's bc i think everyone's in love with him! so like, this is everyone realising that! 
> 
> (except thursday, there's no shipping here im here for father-son relationship, he just realises he loves the boy) 
> 
> this is set somewhere after icarus in a world where the ending of icarus... did not happen lol. minor mentions of the events of Neverland and Coda.

Strange was flustered the first time he met Morse. The very first thing he had said to Strange was dismissive, abrasive, prickly. Normally Strange would give a bit of lip back, he’s not here to be insulted after all but there’s something in the way this man looks at him, it throws him. His words are all tied up and he stumbles through his retort because all he can think about are those eyes staring at him, those lips frowning at him. He isn’t quite sure why but Strange has come over a little flushed suddenly. Then Morse barges past him on the stairs, and he watches those long legs cross two steps at a time, and before he has time to stop it, his brain tells him that Morse has a lovely arse. Suddenly the funny feeling in his chest makes sense. 

* * *

It doesn’t take long for DeBryn to form a soft spot for Morse. The minute he starts swaying in his lab he can’t help but be a little charmed by him, and there’s something endearing in the way he apologises as soon as he wakes up from his spontaneous nap on the tiles. He runs a hand through his hair and tries to pull his shirt a little straighter, and nods at the doctor before they leave. Each time he visits after, or they meet at a crime scene, Morse is standing as far as he can from the body, but gradually DeBryn finds him moving closer. They trade witticisms and poems as they work, they find they have a lot in common and before either of them realise it, they’re having lunch together on the bench outside the hospital and it feels like the most natural thing in the world to offer Morse half his sandwich when the detective admits he hasn't got anything to eat. Debryn realises with a small laugh that he’s given Morse a lot more than a lunch, and maybe the man has had his heart from the minute he fainted in his morgue. 

* * *

Joan Thursday wouldn’t admit it to even her best friend, but she’s had a crush on that Morse boy since he turned up on their doorstep. She knows she should keep her distance with this lot, to any of them she’s only Inspector Thursday’s little girl, but that doesn’t mean she can’t look a little. He’s cute, she can’t help it. Tall and thin, like something out of one of those Biblical painting she thinks. She can picture him, draped in cloths, staring skywards with wings outstretched. She laughs at herself for such silly fantasies, but it’s true. He is beautiful. The first time he smiles at her, she wishes she could paint.

* * *

George Fancy tries to find something good in every day. Some might think that it’s odd, for someone in his line of work to always want to see the best in everything, but he reckons that’s how you stay sane. There’s enough horror in this world, you have to learn to see the good in even the small things. So he finds it. It’s in the sunset over Oxford, or the eyes of that lovely WPC, or the first cup of coffee Strange hands him Monday morning. Then one day he catches sight of Morse, sat at his desk, one hand caught in his hair, tugging absently at a curl, the other around a pen as he scribbles away at some clue or crossword. He looks content, not a look he sees often on Morse. It’s nice. Then Morse looks up, catches his eye and gives him the smallest of smiles, and the breath catches in Fancy’s throat. He thinks maybe he’s found his good thing for today, the week in fact, just maybe the whole month.

* * *

Jakes realises he respects Morse the night they find each other in the pub, when Morse connects the dots and works out who he is, where he’s been, what he’s done. When Morse doesn’t laugh or sneer but looks at him with those quiet eyes, as he helps him back into his chair when his hands won’t stop shaking. He realises he rather likes Morse when the man does what he couldn’t and goes up there alone to meet Thursday, to face possible death with no fear. Morse makes the impossible seem like nothing. He realises he damn well loves the man when the bastard’s carted off in the wrong side of a police car, and he doesn’t see the idiot for months, and it’s all awful for a long time. His heart has been empty for the longest time, but by the time Morse is strolling back into Cowley, it’s fit to burst.

* * *

Shirley Trewlove does not love Morse. At least, she’s not in love with him. But she has to be, for the time being at least, living in their small house together on an undercover job that’s going to last who knows how long. There’s a ring around her finger, and one on his to match. When they walk through town together, she links an arm through his, holds up jumpers to his chest and smiles in the way a doting wife would. When the neighbours wife pops over for tea, Morse is suddenly standing a lot closer to her, his lips press against her cheek, his hands rest on her hips. As they wave their visitor off at the door, she rests her head against his chest, he puts an arm across her shoulder. She thinks for a second, as the sunset wraps around them, that in another life this could have been real. As he trails off to curl up in the bath that evening with a blanket in his arms, she smiles. Maybe she loves him a little.

* * *

Thursday knew he’d found a good man when he met Endeavour Morse. Their first case together, he’ll admit it, Morse astounded him. Smart, dedicated, passionate, everything a good copper needed to be and more. And okay, maybe he wasn’t always the easiest person to get along with. He rubbed Jakes up the wrong way most of the time, and he snapped at Fancy a fair few times when the boy had first joined them. He might not always be the most tactful, and he made mistakes same as anyone did. But he always sought to fix things, always went the extra mile no matter how tough. Unfortunately for Thursday’s aging heart that often meant walking headfirst into trouble too. The first time Thursday felt the bittersweet pang that brought, he had walked into his living room to find Morse asleep on his sofa, bleeding onto a borrowed shirt. Again, when Morse had stuck with him at Blenheim and again when he had shouted from the alley at the bank. 

Morse thought he had nothing to lose every single time, but Thursday realised one evening, watching Morse make polite conversation with Win over a dinner they had all but forced him to join them for, that couldn’t be further from the truth. He’d seen the way Joanie looked at him, how Win always had an extra lunch ready should Morse want it. At the station, he’d watched Fancy’s eyes light up when Morse crossed his desk, heard Strange invite him out for drinks of evening. For some time now, the arguments between him and Jakes were more lighthearted in nature, the petty jibes more of an inside joke at this point. Shirley would stop by Morse’s desk and chat with him more since their stint as a married couple. Thursday might not say it, but Morse was as much a son to him as Sam was.

Morse, it turned out, had a whole family of people who loved him, whether he knew it or not.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i hope yall liked pls lemme know ? <3


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